Friday, July 15, 2016

Sara's Supercali... "Hello World"

I was first daunted by this theme. My brain conjured up images of umbrellas, Mary Poppins and for some reason Peter Max. I thought about how I would use the word and thought of moments or experiences which are so momentous, amazing and beyond description. That reminded me of the image I have of me looking at my first born, and she at me just moments after her birth.

Since that event was far in the past and my home is undergoing massive reorganization the first challenge was finding the photo and then getting it to digital form. Since I only have a sheet scanner available, I found my photo and took a picture of it with my phone and emailed it to myself. There I played with the color balance since the picture's age shows in its red tones.

My original plan was to thread paint the baby in the image but I decided I would never get it done so I traced the outlines. My husband refined my tracing and I copied it to a water soluble film stabilizer (I think I ended up using Superior Dissolve 4x). I made a quilt sandwich with the water soluble, pink fabric on top of butterflies on top of batting and backing (more butterflies). I used Mistyfuse to fuse the pink fabric to the background and bits and pieces of it to baste the quilt sandwich together. I used purple DMC cotton thread to stitch my outline and quilted around some of the butterflies. I chose to finish the edges of the pink fabric by couching fuzzy yarn over the edges using the purple cotton and a freemotion zig zag. I tied the yarn into bows at the corners. The quilt was trimmed to 11 1/2 by 14 1/2 and faced (the proportions don't look like that in my image here for some reason)

My choice of the butterflies is several fold. The soft colors all remind me of a sweet infant. My daughter went through a short stage of only liking purple and black so purple seemed appropriate. The butterflies remind me of hope and spring and sadly, they are ephemeral and we can only enjoy their beauty for a short period. My daughter's spiritual beauty will be with me and many she touched for the rest of our lives though hers was short.

This moment of our first meeting was indeed a monumental beyond description supercalifragilisticexpialidocious moment.

Oh, Sara, what a beautiful idea and an truly innovative interpretation! Yes, this moment you celebrate is one etched on every mother's heart. For you and for me and for one other in our group, however, this moment is truly a poignant one.

Some Super Websites!

The Material Mavens

We are a group of art quilters who come from various parts of the United States, from the East coast and then south to Arkansas and Texas. We were inspired by the original Twelve by Twelve international art quilting group.

Beginning in September, 2011, we started posting our 12"x 12" art quilts, which were based on themes chosen in turn by our members. For Round One, we posted quilts every two months, always on the 15th of the designated months.

Round Two of The Material Mavens began in October, 2014. Some changes were made: quilts were posted every three months, and the quilts could be be either 12"x 12" or rectangular ones measuring 11" x 14", either horizontal or vertical in orientation.

Round Three of The Material Mavens will begin in July, 2018. Again, changes have been made. Now those members who wish to stay affiliated with the group are free to post quilts every time or every now and then. Two, our blog administrator collected suggested themes from the members who wanted to remain affiliated. These themes were then pulled at random from a "hat," and they were then assigned in order for the posting dates. Since we had 13 members who wanted to remain, we will be posting quilts every 3 months until 2021! This date is significant and appropriate, because 2021 will be the 10th year that our group has been in existence.